“Earlier this year, John Kerry seemed to prevail over Susan Rice when President Obama selected him to be Secretary of State, a job they both coveted. On Wednesday, Rice regained the upper hand when she was appointed National Security Advisor, giving her a position that clearly outranks Kerry’s in the Obama power structure,” the Daily Beast reports.

“Now, in an administration where all foreign-policy decision making flows through the White House and the president makes key decisions personally, Rice and Kerry will be the two senior officials jockeying for influence over the remaining three-and-a-half years of Obama’s second term.”

In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? ow.ly/lKS13

— Al Gore (@algore) June 6, 2013

The National Security Agency “appears to be collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of American customers of Verizon, one of the nation’s largest phone companies, under a top-secret court order issued in April,” the Washington Post reports.

“The order, which was signed by a judge from the secret court that oversees domestic surveillance, was first reported on the Web site of the Guardian newspaper… If the document is genuine, it could represent the broadest surveillance order known to have been issued. It also would confirm long-standing suspicions of civil liberties advocates about the sweeping nature of U.S. surveillance through commercial carriers under laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

New York Times: “The disclosure late Wednesday seemed likely to inspire further controversy over the scope of government surveillance.”

Mitt Romney told CNN that he was disappointed with President Obama’s pick of UN Ambassador Susan Rice to be his next national security adviser.

Said Romney: “I find that a disappointing appointment on the part of the president. I think what she did was to very seriously mislead the American people about what happened in Benghazi. My greatest concern about the Benghazi events was the fact there was not a rescue effort attempted and that is very troubling to me.”

President Obama’s “major shuffle of his national security team” ushers out a cautious Washington insider and elevates “two long-time proponents of a larger American role in preventing humanitarian crises and protecting human rights,” the Washington Post reports.

“The ideological shift signaled by the choices highlights a central dilemma for Obama as he seeks to make a mark on the world at a time of austerity — and war weariness — at home. How ambitious Obama intends to be abroad at a time of stiff challenges on the domestic front has remained an open question well into his second term.”